The Charles River Museum hosts EWB-USA CEO Boris Martin, Former EWB-USA Board President Dr. Chris Lombardo, and EWB-USA volunteers from across the New England area for a forward-moving Mill Talk on community engineering. They share stories of impact, engaged in reflection on engineers’ and educators’ calling, and moved toward action to build a better world.
Boris Martin believes that every engineer today can play a role in helping humanity heal and adapt to climate change, and that profound impact happens when engineers embrace their own acts of generosity as a journey of personal transformation.
Dr. Lombardo is currently employed at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. His teaching focuses on electronics, engineering design, and the intersection of engineering and human centered design with a focus on low resource settings.
0:00:19 – Introduction from Bob Perry
0:05:48 – Welcome Boris Martin
0:34:14 – Conversation with Chris Lombardo
0:46:53 – Q&A
1:17:42 – Closing Remarks
Discover more from our Partner Here: https://www.charlesrivermuseum.org
GBH Forum Network ~ Free online lectures: Explore a world of ideas
Like us:https://www.facebook.com/gbhforumnetwork/
Tweet with us: https://twitter.com/GBHForumNetwork
See our complete archive here: http://forum-network.org
It’s not just about the calculations. It’s not just about the design work. It’s seeing the the impact of a water system or latrines or a school, seeing how that impacts the lives of people that you’re only meeting for the first time. All right. Welcome, everybody.
Welcome to the Charles River Museum of Industry Innovation. I’m Bob Perry, the museum’s director, And we’re privileged and delighted to have a team from Engineers Without Borders USA. With us here tonight for our first meal talk of 2024 mil talks are what we call our Lowell Lectures, a program that is generously
Supported by a grant from the Lowell Institute below Institute bit about them. They were founded in 1836 to provide free lectures to the people of Boston, and they’ve been operating continuously since then. Still doing that. The Institute was funded by half of the estate of John Lowell Jr,
And he was the firstborn son of a guy named Francis Cabot Lowell, who with investor partners founded the Boston Manufacturing Company, which was the textile mill that was established on this site in 1813. This was the first fully integrated factory in the world.
It was a cotton textile mill, the textile mill that became the model for the lion’s share of those that followed throughout New England, beginning in East Chelmsford in 1822. There is no East Chelmsford anymore because in 1826 it was renamed Lowell. Why did Francis Cabot Lowell decide to build this revolutionary mill here?
Infrastructure. This was the closest place to where he lived and worked, which was Boston, that had adequate water power potential in the form of a dam that which still exists today. We call it the Moody Street Dam that had powered a small paper mill on this site in the late 1700s.
The design of the mill in this era before steam power included a large waterwheel in the basement that would drive the textile machinery on the floors above the dam created a mill pond just upstream brimming with potential energy. The Boston Manufacturing Company built a small canal just off
To the side of the dam that diverted a flow of water behind the mill at the level of the top of the dam where it was fed into the building, turning the water wheel as it fell to the level of the river below the dam, shedding its potential energy, then exiting the building
And rejoining the Charles River on the other side of this wall to continue its journey to Boston Harbor. That dam, that power canal, that water wheel technology were all essential engineered infrastructure components that together with a lot of hard work, jumpstarted the American Industrial Revolution, which led relentlessly to progressive improvement
In the quality of life for all the communities that it reached. That’s what Engineers Without Borders USA is all about Helping communities meet their infrastructure needs through sustainable engineering, helping developing communities thrive in countries around the world. Here tonight to present and lead a discussion on community engineering,
The work itself, its impact, and how it is a powerful calling for engineers and educators are and engineers Without Borders USA CEO Dr. Boris Martin, Current Engineers Without Borders, USA Board member and Passport president Dr. Chris Lombardo. Boris believes that every engineer today can play a role
In helping humanity heal and adapt to climate change and that profound impact happens when engineers embrace their own acts of generosity as a journey of personal transformation. Boris is the CEO of Engineers Without Borders USA. His personal commitment to building positive, respectful and mutually accountable partnerships across the world mirrors
The organization’s long term commitment to communities that have allowed the organization to understand the deep complexities and nuanced challenges that resilient infrastructure can address. Perhaps above all, Boris is proud to contribute to the organization’s global impact projects that provide reliable access to safe water, renewable energy, nutritious food and improved economic opportunities
For thousands of underserved communities across the USA and around the world. His commitment is to make Engineers Without Borders USA a leading community engineering organization and a catalyst and partner for community engineering around the world. Dr. Chris Lombardo is the associate director of Undergraduate Studies at the Harvard School
Of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Lecturer in Electrical Engineering. His teaching focuses on electronics engineering design and the intersection of engineering and human centered design with a focus on low resource settings. Chris Lombardo began volunteering with Engineers Without Borders USA in 2004 and has been an active volunteer ever since.
He serves as the faculty advisor of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Chapter of the organization, and he has held numerous leadership roles, both locally and nationally, including the curriculum Chair of Engineers Without Borders, USA and AC, Eagle Global Leadership Program, Faculty Leadership Committee and is a former member and past
President of Engineers Without Borders, USA, Board of Directors, and now to begin our formal program, please give a warm welcome to Dr. Boris Martin. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief.
It was the epoch of incredulity. It was the season of light. It was the season of darkness. It was the spring of hope. It was the winter of despair. Everyone knows that beginning that opening. Thank you. The words of Charles Dickens resonate still today because they capture a deep contradiction.
We live at a time where we enjoy so much wealth. The wealth driven by innovation described just this moment by Bob in the introduction, but also we’ve never seen this much hurt and despair in humankind all around the world. We’re closer to it than we’ve ever been, thanks to social media in part,
And the proximity that it brings between us. It’s really my pleasure to be here tonight and to speak with you a little bit of the Charles River Museum to talk about what we do as engineers, a lot more as USA to address this seeming contradiction and to find a way forward together.
It’s a perfect place for the role of engineers in society. When you think of it, there’s marvels on display around us that have created so much wealth for so many people. I personally chose engineering because I believe in the potential of technology and improving everybody’s life.
I marvel in what we can achieve when putting a little bit of science and understanding how the world works and how materials work. When you think about the amount of pressure that is contained in some of these vessels and that that power that at the time, you know, powered so many machines,
I’m here privileged to address you. I know you’re part of the community here and there’s so many people online as well. Thank you so much for your interest in Engineers Without Borders USA. We do this work as volunteers every every day. There is thousands of volunteers across the country.
And knowing that people around us care about this mission as well matters to us a lot. This contradiction that is so eloquently captured by Charles Dickens in the the opening of A Tale of Two Cities is exactly what I would like to focus on and focus my talk about on tonight.
And my aim is to side on those on the side of hope rather than despair. Hopefully, at the end of my make my presentation, you agree with me and I’d like to structure my remarks in three moments. I think they actually match the three moments,
Match the stated purpose of the Charles River Museum. You know, I learned in reading about the museum that there was a a few years ago a change in in name. It used to be the Charles Museum of Industry, and it was changed to the Charles Museum of Industry and Innovation,
Which is a very subtle change. But it means a lot. It means that it’s we’re looking at the past and how, you know, the the amazing achievements of industry in this area of the US. But we’re also looking at the way engineering, innovation and technology
Shapes the present and therefore also shapes the future, which Engineers Without Borders uses. Absolutely. Part of doing so the first step and the first moment is going to be about looking back, getting a grasp together of the state of the world, the world that we are inheriting
From previous generations with all of the good and all of the ugly and the current challenges that face the majority of communities around the planet. The second step will be a reflection about the role of engineers in creating a better legacy for the future generations,
Which is the responsibility of every generation, is to see towards the future, for the future generations. And finally, the last step is something that Chris and I will do together as a conversation diving into the world of engineers, our bodies, us, and how we believe this organization is a formidable platform
And a formidable place for engineers to learn to do that work and to join us and enact their desire to make an impact in the world. And I hope that my presentation sparks an interest in you. My hidden agenda is that you join us. So the first part relates to the past,
And as it shapes also what we see around the world today and my opening sentence is that we are inheriting a wounded world and we are interpreting a broken world. What do I mean by a wounded world? Boston is built on the ancestral land and territory of the Massachusetts and the Pawtucket.
People who have lived on and cared for this land and the water for thousands of years and who continue to live here and care for this place today, Indigenous peoples have lived in this area for several thousands years. Native people have lived and died, celebrated, remembered,
Stewarded and honored this land and water since time immemorial. You may have heard these sentences before because they are part of like an, you know, a sort of a formal land acknowledgment, which many institutions now do. The history of relations with indigenous peoples is full of hurt and injustice.
The more you learn about it, the more you discover. And I have a Canadian background and you’ve seen in the news in the past few years some of the residential school stories that we’ve learned that most Canadians didn’t know about. It’s those are the deep wounds I’m talking about that must be acknowledged
And that we need to continue to work to to heal together. Of course, the work, the work of engineers love what is USA is also international in nature. And the other part of my background is French. So I know a little bit about colonial history.
This is also part of the legacy that we inherit. Slavery and colonization has hurt so many people around the world. And for what it’s, you know, the French history is very tied to the African continent. And we may think that these things are, you know, way back. It’s not not a problem anymore.
But really, it is so close to our under our skin. Everyone in the way we perceive each other, the way we either trust each other or not. And, you know, you’ve seen in the news recently some of the upheaval in West Africa and the anti-French sentiment that is still there.
This is something we inherit that we need to be careful about, that we need to be mindful of, aware of as we do our work so that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. And a lot of these historical processes, engineers have been instruments of,
You know, enabling some of these things to you know, I’ve heard yesterday in a conversation the story about some of the dams that we’ve built in this area that have cut off fish access and, you know, going back upstream and have completely cut off sources of protein and cultural heritage
For entire nations in this area back in the day. I mean, you know, dams are built by engineers. So our profession is completely part of the past. And so therefore, we also need to be part of the future and learning from this mistakes so that we can not repeat them.
And I’m sharing this about the past. And, you know, those are maybe blunt words. I don’t know. Not to suggest that we should ever act from a place of guilt. It’s not about guilt. It’s about acknowledgment. It’s about truth. It’s about reparation. It’s about healing and reconciliation.
These things happen when we can speak openly about the past. I think it’s just like family therapy. You get to talk about things first and then you can walk together towards a better place. So we’re inheriting a wounded world. We’re also inheriting a broken world.
In the 20 years that I have worked in international development, I’ve been hosted by countless communities around the world. They’ve hosted me very graciously. I’ve stayed with families in places like Kenya, Uganda, Burkina Faso, Zambia, Malawi, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Guatemala. I’ve carried water from a contaminated source
Back to my host family, and I got diarrhea from it. I slept under a mosquito net that it was full of holes and I got malaria from it. And for three years, my partner Elena, and I lived in Burkina Faso. We didn’t have a fridge.
We didn’t have a we used a bucket for shower every morning, which was wonderful. We used the latrine. The hardest thing for me was to deal with the cockroaches. It was hard to adjust to. They’re not the small cockroaches that you can find in the Harvard dormitories.
They’re actually the large ones that cast their own shadows. And we lived in a small town, but I made the point of staying with smallholder farmers on a regular basis. Every season I would spend about ten days or two weeks and stay at farmers places, work
Alongside people to really understand the different seasons of the year. And I did that for three years, and I’d like to tell you a story of one of those farmers, a good friend. Now his name is Mousa in the west part of the country.
So Moussa, was we connected really right away because he was exactly my age. He already had two kids and a very entrepreneurial individual like we would. He taught me how to make how to weave baskets. So we go and like cut tall grass and like weave baskets to
To for beekeeping, putting the baskets in the trees, get the bees, and nine months later climb up the tree, harvest the honey from the from the from the baskets, which we did the entire thing together. We grafted mango trees together. We plowed the land by air.
You know, his land like multiple acres of land together by by hand as well. He was ripped. He was really fit. Didn’t need to go to the gym. If you ever want to get ripped, start growing your own sweet potatoes in a one acre piece of land and do it by hand.
And it really it really was it was really fit. The first day that I spent with Moussa, I was memorable for me. So he took me around the village. The first thing was like everybody in the village needed to know that there was this foreigner that had came come in.
So we went and visited. People served. There’s a drink. It’s the sap of a palm tree, kind of pretty liquid. But in the morning is a very sweet. And then by midday it’s fermenting, it’s becoming alcoholic, and by the afternoon it’s dangerous to drink.
So but every single house would serve some for me, obviously. And he was watching me drink it as the day was going on and people were offering food every time as well. Obviously. So we did the entire village and then got home. I asked to use the the the the bathroom
Or the washroom. I forget which one is Canadian and which one is American, but it’s the same. And so he said, number one, Number two is one. Number two. So he gave me a dabba, which is a little hand tool that is
Used to like garden basically, you know, like a garden shovel type of thing. And he said, Well, here’s how you do it. You know, you dig a hole, you go out in the field and then you crouch and and here’s a bucket of water to wash your, you know, wash yourself with afterwards,
With your left hand, never you with your right hand. And so I did as a memory, like, you know, a memorable moment for me. And I realized at that moment that, you know, Musa lives in a village where people didn’t have any latrines. Everyone was doing that as fertilizer afterwards.
So we our friendship really grew over time, you know. And I visited him every season. We did the beekeeping together. We did like the farming together. And we would always be, you know, the we had what’s up was like ahead of ahead of time in Africa compared to here.
So like we we had kind of text messages and things like that and he would always nag me to come and see him. You know, it’s kind of a thing like, you know, when is it you’re coming back? When is it you’re coming back?
But at some point in the middle of that journey together, I he, I didn’t hear from him anymore. One week passes, two week passes, three weeks, one month, two months. So after three months, I decided to go and to see where what was going on. Moussa’s daughter had died of dysentery. She was
She was born on she was her name was Norley. She was born on Christmas Day. And Moussa was so ashamed. He was so heart destroyed by that, losing his daughter that he couldn’t even look me in the eyes. The reason I’m showing you that stories because the number
Sometimes that we hear about, you know, no access to clean water, the number of families, etc., the kind of numbers, because they’re big and it’s hard to grasp what they mean. Every single one of them is a devastated family that’s losing a kid.
There’s 2 billion people around the world that drink unsafe water, gives them parasites, it gives them and dysentery and a lot of other waterborne diseases. There’s 6 million, 600 million kids that attend school without a proper latrine or like sanitation facility in the back.
So it means that when they need to go, the teacher sends them to the back of the building to just go in the field, much like I did on Moussa’s place. The result is that there are still 5 million kids every year that die before the age of five.
It’s one every 6 seconds, and the heart of every single young dad and mom, brothers and sisters, is staggering. There’s 700 million people on the planet, most of them in Africa, who don’t have access to electricity. And it means that they basically spend their money and undermine their health in on kerosene lamps.
The number of people who suffer from hunger is also staggering and the situation is about to get worse. Global average temperatures across the world are rising. Some scientists have already kind of given up on the 1.5 degrees target, you know, above pre-industrial era. And unfortunately, this has signified consequences for vulnerable communities.
In 2022 Engineers Lab more USA with the support financially of the Arconic Foundation and thanks to the donation of many philanthropists around the country, conducted research on the community impact of climate change. And we were. The team did that because we were a bit frustrated with the top down rhetoric around climate change.
A lot of the language is about like, things are going to change in the future. We need to be ready. And it’s a lot of, you know, policy folks kind of making these big statements. We wanted to understand what communities experience was of climate change.
And so we met with something like, you know, we visited 55 different project sites, met with hundreds of people and had conversations with them about their experience, their worries as well about climate change. And the results are pretty clear. Like climate change is not something that’s going to happen in the future.
It’s really something that is affecting people’s lives today. It’s about the present. You know, in some parts of the world, the water tables are lowering, which means that some of the shallower wells don’t have access, don’t have water year round. In other parts, there is sudden and torrential rains that destroy,
Contaminate water sources and destroy infrastructure in many, many places. The rains are also unpredictable. Many of the communities that we work with have sort of a one rainy season, and that’s when they grow their food. The start of the rainy season is less easy to understand or to predict,
And how long the rainy season is going to be is also difficult to understand. And so it means that people’s crops are failing more often. They don’t exactly know when to plant. It’s harder to plant at the right time. There is the economic impact of that. There’s also a cultural impact.
There’s a lot of young people that are simply migrating out of the rural communities. The attachment to the land is is kind of being undermined, and it also has direct consequences on the way we design projects that Engineers Without Borders USA, we have to integrate
And we have integrated all of the learning from that, the anticipation of, you know, future weather patterns into the design of the depth of a well, for example, or the strength of systems when you have piping that’s actually underground and kind of connecting a water source from from a community.
So the problem is getting bigger and more expensive to solve. That’s not exactly a optimistic or joyous way to start a lecture about Engineers without Borders. And so I thought we could, you know, look again around the room and and look at what technology can achieve for us.
It’s all here in the space reminding us that we also have all the tools to make a difference. It’s all here. Human ingenuity is on display in this space. Thank goodness we can cling on to that a little bit. Simple technologies can, you know, create dramatic results to day for less than $15,000.
You can install a hand pump in Africa or in South America. Pretty much solar pumps can lift water up a thousand feet. It’s astounding. I still marvel at that. How does that even work? But it’s possible. And designers, engineers are making that possible. So the technology is well-established, the costs are not prohibitive.
What’s in the way of success then? So in my perspective, it is not just what we do that matters, it’s also how we do it. And it’s really, really important for every single effort that we do to result in lasting deep change, the change that helps communities heal,
That repairs the wounds that we talked about in the beginning and that provides and then that repair the world that provides the solution that people need. And so this kind of leads me to the second part, which is, you know, what is the role and the place of engineers
In a world that is wounded and broken. So if the world is wounded and broken, then engineers must be part of healing and rebuilding. And healing and rebuilding means addressing underserved communities most pressing needs today, much like engineers, Laborers, USA does, and other organizations around the world,
Other communities that mobilize resources towards the same and making sure that what we do, our solutions that will bring a lasting change, that will be resilient to climate change, but also that will work with the local leadership with respect and understanding of the power dynamics
That exist between people for the wounds that have been created before us. That second part is as important as the technical design. So I’ll tell you a little bit. One story that embodies that is a story of a project with Engineers Without Borders USA that in my view embodies this process
Of repairing and healing. It takes place in Ecuador. So I met a young woman called Maria in the community of Dingle Bukhara in the highlands of Ecuador. So if you haven’t been to Ecuador, you should put it on your bucket list. It is a beautiful country. It’s got coastal land, beautiful beaches,
It’s got tropical forest, but it also has high lands and volcanoes. It’s a magical place and the culture is, is astounding. The food is amazing. The highlands of Ecuador are are drier. They’re very steep terrain, kind of stereotypical, you know, central
South America type, you know, where you see the volcanoes and people with yams. And and I have, you know, my role that engineers a Borders USA is kind of the first time for me that I travel to South America. I’m connecting with these cultures now and learning about them.
In technical Bukhara, 12 years ago, the community did not have access to clean water, and the source of water they’re using is 900 feet below the village down in the valley. And every morning girls would go from, you know, their mother’s know houses and go down to the field, fetch water
And bring it back up with the Amazon, you know, filling buckets, etc.. And 12 years ago, the community reached out to Engineers Without Borders USA and said, like, we would like your support. We’ve been working with the local government. We are out of the list of priorities for resources.
We really want access to clean water now and so a team of Engineers Without Borders volunteers came together, structured around the project, met with the community, understood the WHO had leadership in the place, and who wanted to carry this project locally to guide every single aspect of the design together.
They met with people with great respect. They understood the the sort of the criteria that the community had about how to get access to clean water. And then they got to work and designed designed a system. They created a catchment system at the base of the, you know,
Where the water source was, had a very long, you know, sort of pipe, main pipe going back up to the village. They had a storage, they installed a storage tank above the community and then kind of like a set of, you know, pipes for distribution into, into the houses. So 12 years later
And the new CEO of Engineers Laboratories USA, I go to Tehran, go Bukhara to understand what the legacy of this work and whether the system is actually still working or not. And I met with the the water management community Committee, and this is where I met Maria.
So I found in all of my travels that water management committees tend to be older people, you know, kind of the the elders in the community, and they’re kind of in charge. There’s a few like more or less often. I don’t know
If you would agree with that, Chris, but less often, like younger folks. And so Maria is there and she’s about 17 years old. There’s another young guy just beside her and they’re flirting the entire meeting. like pay attention, folks. But the two of them are flirting.
Everybody else is like showing the numbers and kind of really proud to show that they are managing this system. They’ve repaired it multiple times. They have great finances. It’s all on flip charts on the wall. It’s all transparent. It’s right there in front of you. And they and they and the system works.
We asked the community, you know, what was the most significant change for you? And the women said, are shoes last longer? Look yeah that’s nice at the end of the meeting, I went to Mary and I did ask her, you know, what what is it for you and what has changed?
And she said to me, I was five years old when, you know, you first came in and I still remember like carrying water up and down the the valley. But it’s a distant memory. I thought it was I felt such a sense of pride and victory when she said it’s a distant memory.
It’s a feeling that I still nurture today. But the story doesn’t stop here. I mean, the community, including Mary. So Mary is a leader now in her community. She’s part of the Water Management Committee and they want to build an irrigation system. She’s the driving force behind that. She has a spark,
The spark of engineering, that everything is possible, that if you applied yourself to it, if you get the right partnerships, you can make it happen. That spark really matters. It’s part of the development process. In my perspective, it’s not just about what we built is the way people are changed through the process.
So I came back to Denver and I told my team I was so excited about this and and I looked for, you know, early photos of this project. I was like, I need to find, you know, the early PASOK, who were the volunteers.
And I get I find photos in our like Facebook pages of one of our chapters about this Tingle Bukhara project. And I get a photo and in it I can recognize Maria at five years old and she’s there one of the kids like, Wow. And beside her is this young woman, Natalie,
Who’s an American engineer from Pittsburgh who was on that trip. And today, Natalie leads an initiative to support communities around the US with their access to clean water. And when I talked with Natalie, she said, Absolutely, my professional choice is completely impacted by my my,
My community visit and the work that I did with Antiguo Bukhara. It’s a transformative journey for everyone involved. Natalie understands the role of community leadership, the role of ownership, the respect that is needed when you work across barriers of wealth and privilege. Frankly, with communities that have much less than we have,
Whether it is in our own backyards in the US or around the world, she’s part of a generation of engineers that will change the world for us. That’s what I mean by healing. That’s what I mean by rebuilding.
And so that leads me to the third part, which is, okay, well, you know, tell us a little bit more about what Engineers Without Borders USA does and how. And so for that, I’m inviting Chris to join me on stage. Chris is someone who has really built engineers, loves us from the start,
Is like one of the first volunteers has been on the board, is doing so much for the organization he has way more experience and understanding of all of it still than I do after a year and a half. And so, Chris, let’s sit together nice. So, you know, I’ll start by giving
A sense of scale and a tangible sense of what this organization looks like. We have 14,000 volunteers that, you know, have signed up to give their time and their expertise to the organization. Not all of them are engineers. Some of them are like half of them are professionals half of them are students.
We have 230 chapters across the country, professional groups, sometimes within companies, sometimes, you know, at cities. Mike, who’s sitting in the audience, is kind of a leader. In the Boston chapter of IWD, we have between anywhere between 350 to 500 active projects in 26 countries in the world, including across the U.S.
As I said earlier, we’ve completed more than 1000 projects already. All of them are in access to clean water, sanitation facilities, footbridges, electricity route, like you know, solar panels on public buildings, structures like, you know, school buildings for improved education and agricultural projects. So, Chris, tell us a little bit first, you know,
What’s what’s resonated the most with you in the in the stories that I told thanks because. You know, I think as as I look back on my journey with engineers at Borders and in the work that we do, I think one of the most powerful and unique aspects about Engineers Without Borders
Is how we hold our community partners as very much equals with our own. You know, you spoke about the the power dynamics of education or wealth or maybe being from the West. But I think one of the things that’s led to the successes is, is we really, really value our community input.
We bring them in as partners, as to help design whatever, whether it’s a water system, a sanitation system, a school and a build, the partnership based on the community. And I’m drawing this as a contrast that that engineers that Borders is an organization where we focus on the community partnership. In contrast to
There are some organizations out there that may drill wells in a number of communities or build schools and a number of communities, and they may have that that particular technology or that particular project type, very efficient, very replicable, but without the community by in the community ownership understanding how this piece of infrastructure
Works within a specific cultural setting, many cases without that years later there might not be the same successes that you experience when visiting the community in Ecuador like you just did last year. Thanks. Thanks, Chris. And you know, you’re I talked about needs assessment. Can you tell us a little bit
How that happens in a community like what do you do to like you know, understand what people really want? Yeah. So the first time a an engineer that borders project team visits a community, you know, we frequently are always greeted in a very exciting manner.
But, but it’s a lot of work for our team members. There’s numerous community meetings with stakeholder groups. They could be community leaders, could be like a school committee or a water committee, if that’s the the infrastructure that’s being talked about many times.
We’ll have meetings where maybe only the women of the community may be involved with some of our project team members who who are women. And we may do the same thing also with maybe the male community members, because you make it different sides of the story from from different community type, different personalities.
But, you know, it’s not just the community that’s involved. There’s local governments that have play a role in community infrastructure. There’s also other local partners who are maybe doing this type of work in that area. So, for example, I just returned from Kenya a few weeks ago.
We’ve been working with the community of Kibo for about three years and we were there for about 12 days, but we met with the community members several days. We met with the county government, a whole set of contractors in preparation for what can construction might look like. And in this particular case, it’s
A water supply and distribution system for a community. And, you know, without the engagement of the community members and the community leaders, I would personally be concerned that we would not be doing our due diligence as an organization, because what I would love to know is after any project we complete,
We can show up there 12 years later, you know, like you did In your experience, communities continue to maintain a project. Of course, things are going to break. They’ve raised the funds to do that maintenance to repair any faults with the system. And as you know, you tell the story.
Fetching water was a distant memory. And I think that’s what we hope for for many of the communities that we work with. Nice. Thanks. So there’s a whole aspect of volunteer engagement that also, you know, sort of is part of the project process.
Can you tell me a little bit and you work with a lot with with students. So tell me a bit like what changes have you seen in kind of the students engagement around you? And also, like, what change do you see for like with students
Once they get engaged and like, you know, after they what do they learn? Yeah, you know, thanks for. So what I started with engineers that borders about 20 years ago. I myself was an undergraduate student and then continued in graduate school. And, you know, I’d say in my first sort of five
Or ten years of involvement, Engineers at Borders was a student or professional club where, hey, I can learn some professional project management skills. I can I can learn my craft on some design work. I can do a lot of good at the same time.
But, you know, a really interesting shift has happened in sort of the past five or ten years. More and more I see students coming to two engineers at Borders and they say, I know I want to do international development work, I know I want to work with communities
And sort of this deliberateness of of the choices that our volunteers are making as they’re coming to to join the organization is really this transition that I’ve seen occur over the relatively short life of our organization over that past 20 years. And then, you know, you touched on how there’s
The Engines are Without Borders experience. It’s been transformational for you. You know, it’s been transformational for me. But how have I seen that in some of our volunteers? And I think for most of us who who participate in organizations like these,
We’re very excited when we’ll get to know we’re going to meet a community. We’re doing design work because, of course, a bunch of us are engineers. Not all of us were excited by design work, but that, you know, the switch really flips when you get in the community
The first time you get to know the individuals that you’re working for. And it’s not just about the calculations, it’s not just about the design work. It’s seeing the the impact of a water system or latrines or a school, seeing how that impacts the lives of people
That you’re only meeting for the first time. So I think what’s really exciting is students come back, keep coming back. They have that first transformative experience. It’s almost like they’re drinking the Kool-Aid that, you know, they can’t they can’t get enough of it, myself included, because that was that was me in 2005.
But I think, you know, the really exciting thing is for for most of our volunteers, you know, I hope that they take this experience into whatever career that they move into. And it might not be international development engineering. But one of the also very exciting things I’ve watched
Is the number of students who the Engineers Without Borders experience has materially affected, where they have chosen to go with their careers. They want to pursue careers in international development. They maybe had interests in other areas of engineering, and they’ve decided infrastructure is critical, whether internationally or domestically. And seeing that transformation
Do go to working with low resource communities, communities who are in many ways less fortunate than us is very exciting. It gives me hope for for this generation of students and young professionals. Awesome. Thank you so much. Chris, Can you tell us what makes in your view, what makes a project successful?
Well, so many things. There are so many things to make a project successful. I mean, I’m going to come out and joke upfront. We always need funds. So, you know, if you’re interested in donating, please join. But no, but actually so I think there’s a number of things.
The the relationship that we have with our communities, we don’t do a single project type that’s replicated several times. I think that helps with the longevity of the projects. That’s what makes them sustainable years after they’re constructed. I think that while we are an engineering organization and we know our roots, our engineers,
We actively recruit and welcome all of the the disciplines, the professions that really make infrastructure possible public health professionals, medical professionals, people who have an understanding of economics because, you know, you need to make a water system work. It’s not just that that that our organization comes in and build something.
You need to have an economic model to raise money so that when something breaks, not if it breaks, it will break. It can be repaired. And that our partner communities can’t and shouldn’t be reliant on on a Western organization for for perpetuity. Our goal
You know, there’s an anecdote of you know teacher person the fish and they can provide for life and and I think that resonates very true with with a lot of the work that we do. Fantastic. Well, thank you, Chris. We we would love to also take a few questions from the
From the audience and to open it up as a conversation. So I’ll give my microphone and then we can I. I was just wondering if you do any coordination of any kind with Kiva loans, because Madagascar’s, you know, it’s like all these bright people who want to find some way
To do solar on Madagascar, which is a great idea. And the loans are the micro system. And I know that’s separate from you, but it seems like it’s it’s right on on the edges of each other. I just wondered if you can. Yeah.
So you’re referring to an organization that provides, you know, microloans to people so they can buy something and then make a business out of it. This is a different approach than kind of like building basic infrastructure in communities. But there’s a link, right? So in in situations where, you know, we’re providing electricity
To a to a community or there are ways that that can be monetized. You know, you can sell cell phone charging services and other things. So there’s a virtual cycle of the capital that we bring into the community that can be then pay forward in multiple ways.
We don’t provide financial capital like that. It’s more like, you know, infrastructure capital. But I think the the mechanisms, you know, behind that can be similar. At the end of the day, I think. You know what? Hi. Can you tell us more about the role of women in these community projects? Yeah.
Thank you. So so I’m going to answer the question from from two different sides. I’ll first talk about our project teams. So, you know, I feel really fortunate, at least in our chapter, our chapter for an engineering school is well over 50% women. Exactly. Thumbs up. I’m very proud of that.
But but I really think it’s crucial to be providing especially water services, because in so many of the communities and cultures that we work in, it’s primarily women and children who are responsible for gathering water. So I previously talked about in in many projects, the project teams have women only meetings.
And so members of of the Harvard chapter, as well as other chapters do this. And you know, I’d love to be on a fly on the wall and I get the reports afterwards. But our team has gathered so much valuable information by creating that safe space for women
In the community to talk with our women team members is really highly influenced. Some of the design choices that were made and that information would not have come out of a full water committee meeting that was mixed gender. And we’ve done this in
Me personally in the project teams I’ve been a part of in in multiple countries. But I know that this is a theme throughout a greater number of projects that I’ve been associated with. Thank you. Is that because women are marginalized in these communities? I think that in some cases that’s absolutely true
That women are marginalized. I think in some cultures in general, the economic breadwinners of households are men. That’s not always true. But I think there’s a lot of different factors because Engineers Without Borders works in a few dozen countries, and there’s a lot of cultural differences across there
In in some places we work that at least I’ve personally worked. Women have leadership roles on the water committee, but those marginalization is still occurring even if the the chairperson of the Water Committee is a woman. So I can’t speak to knowing any individual communities culture in depth.
I haven’t spent three years in a community like Boris has in Burkina Faso, and I’d argue that’s only maybe scratching the surface on truly understanding a culture that that’s different than your own. But I think we’re sensitive to understanding there are are gender dynamics at play and we want to make sure that
The infrastructure that we design in partnership with the communities is really going to be utilized effectively by those who are using it. And frequently that is the women in the community. Could you tell us more about how you follow up on some of these projects?
I mean, you mentioned the 12 years later, but is that the first time you followed up on that community or were there other times? Thank you. I think that’s probably very important to a lot of people that are interested. Yeah, for sure. Thank you.
So the way the project process works at Engineers Without Borders USA, the way it’s designed and managed, is first like the needs assessment, then a alternative analysis, then kind of your design construction, and then there’s two years of post-construction active monitoring during which the team does operations and maintenance training
So that for two years the team makes sure that there’s proper ownership and management of whatever asset has been built. And then we have a like our national team does lack long term monitoring. So there is like spot checks around all of the projects, the thousand projects that we’ve done
Haven’t been, you know, all of them systematically, you know, sort of visited after five years. But we have enough data that we can actually infer kind of the level of the rate of survival, you know, at five years and ten years, which is about 85%. Yeah, that and I think
It’s something that we’re moving towards in the coming years is we’re deliberately working with a select number of on the ground partners and we’re trying to cluster projects in sort of those geographic areas. So let me give you an example. In Kenya, the Harvard chapter works with this community to keep on
The San Francisco professional chapter, works with the community of Leila. The Virginia Tech chapter works with the community of Massage Steel, and we all work with the same individual. His name is Paul Longo, and so Paul works with six or eight communities in six or eight chapters.
So if something goes awry in the community that I work with, T-Bone, he’s going to know about it. If something goes awry in Laila, where he grew up, he’s going to know about it. So it’s not that it has to be a year or two later
Where the individual chapter may visit the community. We have on the ground, people are much more in touch. Day to day of what is you know, is there was there a design problem? is it just a stainless steel rod that broke? That’s simple maintenance. And we need to contact a local technician.
But we have people on the ground who are partners, who work with multiple communities. We’re trialing this in a few areas, but it’s a model we’re looking to expand to in almost everywhere that we work. So just a follow up.
So do you have personal experience where something like that has come up with some of your people on the ground have come back and said, hey, they need a little bit more help? Can you go. Back and help them? Yeah, certainly some of the work I’ve done in both Mexico and the Dominican
Republic, you know, things break routine maintenance issues and we’ve been fortunate enough to to be in contact with our community partners to know, okay, this particular part or this particular system has a maintenance issue. So our team can look back and say, was that a design flaw
Or was it a simple maintenance issue moving forward in western Kenya, in Migori County, or speaking of this individual, Paul, he’s not only working with the the six or eight communities I mentioned. He is also working with the county government. He works with contractors. So he’s really becoming an epicenter
For for the communities in Migori County. It’s not only the engineers that borders partners with, but other communities and hopefully maybe other entities in the future. Does he also play a role in selecting new projects and that sort of thing as well? Yeah, absolutely. He’s his reputation has gathered.
So even from my personal experience when we were in the community last May, in the process of drilling a well in the community, a a new community in and the name escapes me at the moment, but their water committee came out to witness the drilling.
Paul introduced them to myself and to our project team. And while the drilling was occurring, you know, a few tens of feet away myself, one of our other mentors were talking with that water committee about with the Engineers Board Without Borders process. Looks like what a timeline
Might look like for projects, what those relationships look like. And since then, since, you know, summer 2023, that community has submitted an application to engineers that borders USA that projects been approved. And we’re waiting for our chapter to adopt the project to work with that community. Thank you. Back to the operation.
Look, are you going to be continually involved in the project? There is no after your commissioned the project does the local people are going to be taking care of it or how does the whole thing happen? Or who I mean is who’s responsible for training and day to day
Maintenance of equipment and, you know, make sure that the whole operation is smooth and is running properly? Yeah, that’s a great question. So part of every design in construction phase is making sure the community has the knowledge to do the operation and maintenance of whatever system it is, whether it’s a water pump,
Latrine system, solar energy system. So in some cases our project teams will directly work with community members or a small set of, say, technicians, people who would be trained to be like the system operators or or system maintenance people. In other cases, our contractors who may be
Of the culture or the communities where we work, they’re more culturally appropriate to do that or maybe have a better grasp of whatever local language it is. So in some cases they’re the ones who do those trainings. But ultimately, the goal is that communities are not reliant on engineers, that borders moving forward.
So we really focus on the skill building within the communities to do simple operation and maintenance. Sure, of course, there might be a larger failure of some kind people like Paul or other in-country groups can know where to get technicians or find parts suppliers or contractors in the area.
So we’re certainly around for a subsequent few years post-construction But we don’t want the community to be reliant on us in perpetuity. Another question I have, look, how is the local governments or ordinance look, you know, approach you guys because this is a non-governmental, you know, activity or project.
And particularly if you’re in in remote areas in various countries because I have been to some of these places and governments sometimes are not very friendly with those projects because they have a fear of, you know, influencing these NGOs in that community. I’m just wondering, you know, what is your experience?
Well, you’re touching on multiple things. One, every time there’s a project, the the project team engages with the municipality most of the time. In fact, the municipality provides some of the funding for the project. The community raises some of the money the municipality does as well,
And then the project team raises the rest. So they’re involved in it. And the politics of, you know, where the resources go and whether there’s always some kind of what we sometimes witness is, you know, a mayor was in you know, a mayor was elected by a certain,
You know, part of his district, and he favors the people that voted for him and provides funding there and not elsewhere. So we have to whenever we do strike, you know, partnerships with local municipalities, we have to be very clear with them that we’re not we’re not discriminating based on political color.
And that’s part of the rule of engagement. But those are some of the more complex kind of like partnership management principles that we’ve had to learn over the years. It’s not just building something, it’s really embracing the entire complexity. You know, you talk about, you know, you ask pointed questions about operations
And maintenance and who owns this asset. At the end of the day, in the early days of engineers. But as you say, there, there’s some mistakes that were made like that where it wasn’t clear who was owning the asset. And if you’ve built a bridge and the local
You know, the Ministry of Infrastructure did not want a bridge there and it does not want to be responsible for maintaining it, then that becomes a danger for everyone involved. Because what what, after ten years, 15 years, 20 years, the bridge needs maintenance. And if it doesn’t have it and if it fails.
So we’ve had to, like, evolve the approach to really make sure that the national government, regional government, district governments understand what’s being done and where and have a say and have, you know, sort of sovereignty over their own infrastructure, much like, you know, you wouldn’t want someone coming in to the U.S.
And start building stuff in the middle of Boston. I mean, you know, so same thing everywhere in the world. Thank you. So you were you’re talking about training. Is that mostly like in-person demonstration and word of mouth, or. Do you provide a. Repository of documentation with. Parts lists and assembly guides.
And troubleshooting and stuff like that? Yeah, that’s a great question. And in the simple answers, I’m going to say all of the above. But the so in preparation for any any construction project, the project teams in addition to producing design documentation, engineering analysis and so forth,
Is also required to put together a operations and maintenance manual for the community for whatever the built system is, and that should include things like data sheets for like a pump that you might buy in the community or solar panel or things of that sort, a regular schedule of maintenance tasks,
You know, whether it’s a weekly or monthly or a yearly type task based on whatever built system it is. And it is those those manuals are provided to the community in their own local language. So if it’s not English, which many of the places we work,
It is not English, then our teams find either members within their own project teams who have language skills. So for example, it’s not all that difficult to find somebody who has Spanish language skills and can do pretty good translation there.
Or for some of the less commonly spoken languages, at least in the US, that sometimes we’ll rely on our international partners who are frequently fluent in English, but also whichever local language that spoken many times they can help us with those translations as well. Do you work with United Nations? You
I believe that we’ve had partnerships with different branches of the U.N., provided funding for some of the work and, you know, maybe linked to the question you’re asking is there’s a lot of institutional funding, you know, that goes towards infrastructure for development and so what’s the role of philanthropic, you know, activities
Like the work of Engineers Without Borders in that? And one of the you know, when when Chris was describing the the role of local partners that we work with in really guiding the work, selecting projects, building a track record and building a reputation for themselves as community engineering providers in those countries.
What’s what we’ve learned over the past decade in working with these partners in that is that they have their own vision and their own strategy and their own ambition for impact in their own communities. And so we can work with them, build a track record that is necessary to
To demonstrate the capacity and the the frankly, the appropriateness of the work we do with them and alongside them. But then once we have a track record, we can build on that and access more significant amounts of funding to actually do these things at scale. And so the way I present this in
The efforts of Engineers Without Borders USA in a way, is to catalyze change, to build a generation of organizations around the world that are focused on addressing the needs of underserved communities which otherwise don’t get served. Because there’s a reason why, after so many decades of effort in, you know, providing infrastructure
In most countries, there is still, including across the U.S., there’s still communities that just are underserved. And so there is a generation of organizations and organizational leaders that want to apply engineering at a community level to really spark change from the bottom up. And we’re there to support these organizations,
And we’re one of them as well because we do work in our own backyard. So it’s much more of like an equitable partnership and allyship amounts among organizations doing this work than it is us doing it for everybody else. Can you discuss the projects that are in the United States? Yes. Yeah, thanks.
Well, this is a great question. So there’s many communities around the U.S. that we’re really, you know, wealthy and and thriving towns. A while back and over, you know, changing, economy changing in circumstances have become, you know, underserved and under-resourced is sometimes kind of ghost towns. You know,
I’ve been in places in Pennsylvania with like, you know, 50 or 100 houses in a small community that has no police service, no fire station, no post office, and only a part time person who’s basically there to coordinate the city like the the town services they oftentimes don’t have.
And they may have a system for water that is autonomous, that serves the 50 houses, but that’s not plugged to a municipal system when these systems age and they break. So then suddenly, you know, someone’s going to turn on the water and it’s going to come.
Rusty Brown There’s something’s wrong with my water. What’s going on? Okay, Everyone you know around the town is, you know, getting together. What do we need to do about this? They call the they call the municipality. And the municipality says, okay, well, it’s $2 million to get connected,
To get your system to a standard where you can get connected to the to the the public service. They don’t have that kind of money because oftentimes it’s, you know, average income of $30,000 a year or something like that. And so they but there is funding for them available.
There’s state revolving funds, there’s federal funding. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is also bringing a significant amount of resources across the country for these communities. The question is, how do they access it? Because it’s still very difficult to make your case. And so they call upon engineers, laborers, USAA volunteers across the country
To provide the pre-engineering reports needed, which is a technical report which you can hire for 20, $30,000 maybe. So it’s still a significant amount of work and engineering done to assess the need. They don’t have that. And it’s a risk, right? Like because you’re not sure that you’re going
To succeed in your grant application. So are you going to spend 30,000? If you make $30,000 a year, are you going to spend that much money, a year’s worth of income on a report that you’re not sure is going to give you a positive answer? So we basically de-risk that process.
We do it pro-bono. We have amazing professional engineers across the country that are willing on their way back from work or on their way to work to stop in a community that otherwise they would never go to to meet people they would otherwise never meet to form a relationship,
To get to know people, to understand their needs. And then the team provides the pre engineering services needed to then make a case. And then we’ve had communities then go to their state, you know, revolving funds, go to the federal government and access
Millions of dollars to do upgrades that otherwise they would never had, they would never have would have applied to even get that funding. And so in the case of the US projects, we’re not there to replace the private sector that’s very capable of doing design
And build, you know, once the project is won. But we support communities to get to the place where they can actually access those funds. And you’d be surprised how many communities just don’t have even it’s really hard to get an engineer these days, you know, just like tradespeople. This is very difficult.
You can and so some never get their phone calls answered because they’re just, you know, it’s almost like they’re not worth it. So what we found with Project so the domestic program is a little bit more recent. It’s growing today. The there’s about you know in our in current database
Of active projects there is 50 of them in the U.S. and you know maybe 320 of them across the world. It’s growing though, because we are a you know, there’s a technical assistance centers across the country that have been set up by the Environmental Protection Agency and engineers levels.
USA is the sole engineering partner to six of those regional technical assistance centers. So this is something that the demand is going to increase significantly in the coming years. How might someone get involved and engineers without borders either as a student or as someone in industry? That’s a great question. So throughout
Almost every city and state in the U.S., you know, if you’re a university student, many, not all, but many universities have engineers without Borders chapters. There are also local professional chapters throughout the nation. Basically You just need to email somebody, say, Hey, I’m interested in show up at a meeting.
And and I do want to reinforce, though, if you happen to be a university student, let’s say your university does not have engines, our borders Chapter one, you could focus on starting one, but two, you can also participate with either other university chapters or other professional chapters, similar national member.
And you know, you don’t have a huge density of professionals around you, but there’s universities there. All of the student chapters need professional mentors so professionals can work student chapters as well. So really a location title or a university name is only that. That’s just a physical location.
But most, most chapters out there are always interested and excited to have have new members, people who are enthusiastic about the course. With native communities, how that can be complicated. And I just wondered how that works. Yeah. I mean, Indigenous communities have their own leadership structures and have their own,
You know, sort of governance and there’s a whole process for them to make decisions about what they want to do and how. And it’s just a matter of respecting that process, understanding it and understanding who to speak with and being there with the community all along.
Because you can’t take you can cut corners. I think. And we have practitioners in the room who have tremendous experience doing this work, who will also guide the work of engineers or borrowers in that space. Thank you for your discussion so far.
So my question is, when it comes to design, to design decisions, when the community needs don’t align with what the community wants, how are those decisions made like the really tough, difficult ones? Well, I think you both I’d be happy to answer the question. Yeah. Okay. So so that’s, you know,
A really difficult challenge. I think some of the the real learning that’s happened over the early years of engineers that borders is our teams like like some others would listen to what what community members are community leaders would say respond design, build. wait classic engineering problem. That wasn’t actually the problem.
The problem was actually something else. And so I think that’s that’s a difficult discussion. And I don’t think there’s a slam dunk right answer. One of the many common themes in in many of our communities where clean potable water is an issue is sanitation is also a problem. We’ve seen throughout the news,
Lots of international organizations have lots of clean water campaigns. It’s been said that water is sexy. Sanitation, not so much. We don’t really like talking about latrines and human excrement and where that needs to go. But it’s a extremely important problem, almost a more important problem
Than clean water in the sense that without the UN, including many times it is the cause of unclean water. So having the cultural sensitivity to have discussions about here is a stated problem that that community members or community leaders have identified and teams on the ground with the professional experience
They bring may say, yes, this is an issue, but there’s a different root cause. There’s no slam dunk. It’s a hard problem, but our teams have to work through it. And I don’t have a perfect answer for you. For every know yes. So your question is, okay,
But but I but I will say to your point, so for those of you here who didn’t hear the statement, the statement was for every gallon of water delivery, there’s a gallon of water. You have to dispose of. And so I think on the sanitation angle, that’s an absolutely critical thing.
I think one thing that our teams have learned over the years that is very related to that statement is areas who typically have not had a lot of water that have water services provided our teams need to be really careful about. Water is a great breeding ground for mosquitoes and mosquito borne illness.
So our teams do think a lot about weight. If there’s this great water resource that that our communities have water security, they have potable, but that also can cause other knock on effects. So our teams are very sensitive to that and do consider that
And at least I know our team considers that almost all the time when there’s a large amount of water storage or rare waste water, not even necessarily sanitation or latrines, but where does waste water go? So it doesn’t pool and be a breeding ground for mosquitoes or other insects.
I have a question for. The U.S. and worldwide enrollment in engineering schools grow a lot or. In 20 years ago, the concentration of engineers you know, in the U.S. in in Europe, in kind of like wealthy countries is very high. And it was almost absent in especially in Africa. Today, it’s different.
There’s a lot of universities in Nairobi, in Kampala, in in Accra. There is tremendous, very high quality engineering schools. So we are seeing a greater number of engineers going out into these markets. But I think the ratio is still that on a per capita basis, there’s 900 times more engineers in the U.S.
Than in Uganda. So there is still a significant deficit of that kind of resource in developing countries. So that’s something that, you know, the work of engineers that borders USA is addressing a gap in that in that way. And we also work with, you know, local, local universities
And always look for building talent locally as part of our work, because ultimately that’s the long term the long term answer. The other part of that, you know, is we’re part of a global network of Engineers Without Borders organizations. There’s about 70 of them around world.
I used to work in the Canadian organization, and there’s also some in the Global South, in South America, in Africa and Asia. So it’s a phenomenal network of organizations of them driven to address needs in their own country and also internationally. For those who can afford it. I think one problem is
Engineers don’t get the respect that they used to get. They also don’t get the salaries the lawyers get. Absolutely to add on to, to your point, something that a number of our project teams do in alignment is they do try to form partnerships with local universities.
The chapter I work with works with the University of Nairobi, Kenya. I know in New York chapters work with universities in Rwanda, etc. and that that hits on another angle on our mission, which is developing the human talent. So we’ve really talked about the
The community infrastructure for most of our conversation this evening. But but another angle is developing the human talent and the leadership with our partners. And we found that by working with the University of Nairobi Engineering School that there’s, as Bor saying, very talented engineering students
As part of their institutions who are itching to get project experience because the hands on engineering experience is a little less prevalent as part of education in a number of the countries where we work. But the students have great technical skills and provide a cultural perspective that our project team members frequently don’t.
They’re they’re almost a translator or mediator and not only in language but in culture as well. Look, folks, it’s time for me to say thank you for to all of you for your interest in Engineers Borders USA. You know, ultimately the work that we do is possible when we share the story,
When we share our passion. I hope that’s what we did tonight. We invite you to consider the organization in one way or another, because the more we are with this mission, the more the further we can go together. So Thank you very much again for coming tonight.
1 Comment
AMAZING & WONDEROUS